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GRAND PRIX RESULTS: CANADIAN GP, 1992

The adventures of Andrea Moda Formula kept everyone amused once again with the team not having any engines because of legal actions and flight delays. The result was that the team borrowed one Judd from Brabham and Roberto Moreno completed a total of four laps before his car broke down. Perry McCarthy did not even get to run. Fondmetal finally finished the first of the new GR02 chassis which Gabriele Tarquini used.

Nigel Mansell, the winner of five of the six races to that point, seemed to be a man under stress in Canada and rumours suggested that this was because the Williams team was deep in negotiation with Alain Prost, who was sitting out the year, having been dumped late in 1991 by Ferrari.

On lap 15 Mansell made a bid for the lead at the final chicane. He was travelling too fast and overshot the corner, bouncing over the kerb and landing on its front wing in the sandtrap. Mansell then spun in front of Senna. Patrese hesitated while trying to go around his errant team mate and he lost a place to Berger and so McLaren was suddenly running 1-2 at the front. Mansell had done nothing to help his cause with the men at Williams-Renault. Having made a complete mess of his race, Mansell then compounded his idiocy by abusing McLaren boss Ron Dennis and then turned his anger on the press who turned up to ask him questions. The stewards would not listen.

While Mansell was going through this theatrical performance in the paddock, Capelli smashed his Ferrari up badly when something broke on the car.

On lap 38 Senna slowed with a gearbox problem. He was out. Berger was left in the lead with Patrese second under pressure from Schumacher and Martin Brundle. Martin then overtook Michael while they were in traffic. Patrese and Brundle then both retired with broken gearboxes and so Schumacher inherited second with Alesi third, Wendlinger fourth in the March, Katayama's Venturi-Larrousse fifth and Andrea de Cesaris (Tyrrell) sixth. Before the end of the race Katayama went out with engine failure which allowed Erik Comas to take sixth place, the point he scored moving Ligier ahead of Larrousse in the battle to stay out of pre-qualifying.

The system of pre-qualifying was developed in response to the increasing number of teams competing in Formula 1. It was decided that 30 cars were the maximum safe limit to compete for 26 grid places. The cars which had to pre-qualify were decided at the beginning and the midpoint of each season. The 26 cars which had achieved the best results in the previous two-half seasons automatically entered official qualifying for the race. All the other cars had to pre-qualify for the 4 remaining slots available for official qualifying. Those that failed to pre-qualify just went home.